Clashing Over Commerce
Clashing Over Commerce

Author: Douglas A. Irwin

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-11-29

Total Pages: 873

ISBN-13: 022639901X

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A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year: “Tells the history of American trade policy . . . [A] grand narrative [that] also debunks trade-policy myths.” —Economist Should the United States be open to commerce with other countries, or should it protect domestic industries from foreign competition? This question has been the source of bitter political conflict throughout American history. Such conflict was inevitable, James Madison argued in the Federalist Papers, because trade policy involves clashing economic interests. The struggle between the winners and losers from trade has always been fierce because dollars and jobs are at stake: depending on what policy is chosen, some industries, farmers, and workers will prosper, while others will suffer. Douglas A. Irwin’s Clashing over Commerce is the most authoritative and comprehensive history of US trade policy to date, offering a clear picture of the various economic and political forces that have shaped it. From the start, trade policy divided the nation—first when Thomas Jefferson declared an embargo on all foreign trade and then when South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union over excessive taxes on imports. The Civil War saw a shift toward protectionism, which then came under constant political attack. Then, controversy over the Smoot-Hawley tariff during the Great Depression led to a policy shift toward freer trade, involving trade agreements that eventually produced the World Trade Organization. Irwin makes sense of this turbulent history by showing how different economic interests tend to be grouped geographically, meaning that every proposed policy change found ready champions and opponents in Congress. Deeply researched and rich with insight and detail, Clashing over Commerce provides valuable and enduring insights into US trade policy past and present. “Combines scholarly analysis with a historian’s eye for trends and colorful details . . . readable and illuminating, for the trade expert and for all Americans wanting a deeper understanding of America’s evolving role in the global economy.” —National Review “Magisterial.” —Foreign Affairs

The Rise and Fall of American Growth
The Rise and Fall of American Growth

Author: Robert J. Gordon

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-08-29

Total Pages: 785

ISBN-13: 1400888956

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How America's high standard of living came to be and why future growth is under threat In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end? Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth challenges the view that economic growth will continue unabated, and demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated. Gordon contends that the nation's productivity growth will be further held back by the headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government, and that we must find new solutions. A critical voice in the most pressing debates of our time, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is at once a tribute to a century of radical change and a harbinger of tougher times to come.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History
The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History

Author: Melvyn Dubofsky

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 1139

ISBN-13: 0199738815

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As the global economic crisis that developed in the year 2008 makes clear, it is essential for educated individuals to understand the history that underlies contemporary economic developments. This encyclopedia will offer students and scholars access to information about the concepts, institutions/organizations, events, and individuals that have shaped the history of economics, business, and labor from the origins of what later became the United States in an earlier age of globalization and the expansion of capitalism to the present. It will include entries that explore the changing character of capitalism from the seventeenth century to the present; that cover the evolution of business practices and organizations over the same time period; that describe changes in the labor force as legally free workers replaced a labor force dominated by slaves and indentures; that treat the means by which workers sought to better their lives; and that deal with government policies and practices that affected economic activities, business developments, and the lives of working people. Readers will be able to find readily at hand information about key economic concepts and theories, major economists, diverse sectors of the economy, the history of economic and financial crises, major business organizations and their founders, labor organizations and their leaders, and specific government policies and judicial rulings that have shaped US economic and labor history. Readers will also be guided to the best and most recent scholarly works related to the subject covered by the entry. Because of the broad chronological span covered by the encyclopedia and the breadth of its subjects, it should prove useful to history students, economics majors, school of business entrants as well as to those studying public policy and administration.

U.S. History
U.S. History

Author: P. Scott Corbett

Publisher:

Published: 2024-09-10

Total Pages: 1886

ISBN-13:

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U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.

Out of Stock
Out of Stock

Author: Dara Orenstein

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2019-11-07

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 022666306X

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In Out of Stock, Dara Orenstein delivers an ambitious and engrossing account of that most generic and underappreciated site in American commerce and industry: the warehouse. She traces the progression from the nineteenth century’s bonded warehouses to today’s foreign-trade zones, enclaves where goods can be simultaneously on US soil and off US customs territory. Orenstein contends that these zones—nearly 800 of which are scattered across the country—are emblematic of why warehouses have begun to supplant factories in the age of Amazon and Walmart. Circulation is so crucial to the logistics of how and where goods are made that it is increasingly inseparable from production, to the point that warehouses are now some of the most pivotal spaces of global capitalism. Drawing from cultural geography, cultural history, and political economy, Out of Stock nimbly demonstrates the centrality of warehouses for corporations, workers, cities, and empires.

Ivy and Industry
Ivy and Industry

Author: Christopher Newfield

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2004-01-21

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0822385201

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Emphasizing how profoundly the American research university has been shaped by business and the humanities alike, Ivy and Industry is a vital contribution to debates about the corporatization of higher education in the United States. Christopher Newfield traces major trends in the intellectual and institutional history of the research university from 1880 to 1980. He pays particular attention to the connections between the changing forms and demands of American business and the cultivation of a university-trained middle class. He contends that by imbuing its staff and students with seemingly opposed ideas—of self-development on the one hand and of an economic system existing prior to and inviolate of their own activity on the other—the university has created a deeply conflicted middle class. Newfield views management as neither inherently good nor bad, but rather as a challenge to and tool for negotiating modern life. In Ivy and Industry he integrates business and managerial philosophies from Taylorism through Tom Peters’s “culture of excellence” with the speeches and writings of leading university administrators and federal and state education and science policies. He discusses the financial dependence on industry and government that was established in the university’s early years and the equal influence of liberal arts traditions on faculty and administrators. He describes the arrival of a managerial ethos on campus well before World War II, showing how managerial strategies shaped even fields seemingly isolated from commerce, like literary studies. Demonstrating that business and the humanities have each had a far stronger impact on higher education in the United States than is commonly thought, Ivy and Industry is the dramatic story of how universities have approached their dual mission of expanding the mind of the individual while stimulating economic growth.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Author: Klaus Schwab

Publisher: Crown Currency

Published: 2017-01-03

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1524758876

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World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolu­tion, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work. Schwab argues that this revolution is different in scale, scope and complexity from any that have come before. Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries and governments, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones and virtual assistants to 3D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wear­able sensors and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3D printed liver are already in development. Imagine “smart factories” in which global systems of manu­facturing are coordinated virtually, or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials. The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound, than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society and individu­als. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future—one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frame­works that advance progress.